Coach Kim Jong Hun, after North Korea's 7-0 trouncing at the hands of Portugal in its second game of this year's World Cup, said there would be no punishment for the players: "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; it doesn't always turn out the way you want," he said before the team went on to lose to Ivory Coast. "But there are going to be no further consequences." He should have been concerned about what he would face, too, according to new reports.

Concerns for the players were legitimate, given the reports of Moon Ki-nam, a former national-level North Korea coach who defected to South Korea in 2004 and said players are rewarded well if they win but are sometimes sent to the coal mines if they lose.

According to Radio Free Asia, the entire team was summoned earlier this month to Pyonyang for a shaming and reprimand, except for Korean-Japanese players Jung Tae Se and An Yong Hak. The team was accused of "betraying" the spawn of the Dear Leader and were subjected to a "grand debate" that focused on their failure in the "ideological struggle," according to sources that included a Chinese businessman. More:

"They took the stage before more than 400 people, including the sports minister Park Myoung Chul and a deputy director of the Workers' Party Organization and Guidance Department.

Players were then criticized by other athletes and a sports commentator and required to criticize head coach Kim Jong Hun.

The Chinese trader said in an interview that how the players were reprimanded and what kind of punishment they received wasn't known.

...According to another source in Shinuiju, the meeting lasted six hours and coach Kim Jung Hun's safety could be in jeopardy, as he was publicly accused of 'betraying the Young Gen. Kim Jong Un,' North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's anointed heir.

'There are rumors that coach Kim Jung Hun has been expelled from the Workers' Party, or that he has been sent to perform forced labor at a residential building construction site in Pyongyang, but such rumors are hard to verify,' the source said.

According to the same sources, the sports commentator who covered World Cup games was present, and noted sports commentator Ri Dong Kyu was tasked to point out the shortcomings of each of the players, and subsequently criticize them."

Though it's definitely the harshest, North Korea isn't the only country to overreact over its team's World Cup performance: Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan suspended his country's team from international play after performing poorly at the World Cup, prompting angry response from FIFA.

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just has issues with Paul the World Cup oracle octopus.

(Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Of his home country Haiti, that is, which the singer has tried to help in the wake of the devastating 7.0 earthquake in January, killing some 250,000. More from Reuters on the potential bid for the November election:

"In a statement sent to the media on Tuesday, the family of the former Fugees star, who has served as ambassador-at-large under the current Haitian government, confirmed for the first time that he was considering putting his hip-hop infused music career on the back burner to run for Haiti's top job.

'Wyclef's commitment to his homeland and its youth is boundless, and he will remain its greatest supporter regardless of whether he is part of the government moving forward,' the statement said.

'At this time, Wyclef Jean has not announced his intent to run for Haitian president. If and when a decision is made, media will be alerted immediately,' it said without elaborating."

Jean, who was born in Haiti but raised in New York, is extremely popular in the country where half of the population is under age 21. He has until Aug. 7 to register for the Nov. 28 general election.

Jean wrote an op-ed earlier this month in USA Today reminding the world to not forget about the long-term goals for Haiti as the six-month anniversary of the quake passed. Sounded a bit like a campaign kick-off:

"...There's the near future, in which we need to continue to provide as much support and aid as possible to the people still living in tents (about 1.2 million at last count), those living on the streets and those living in the rubble of their homes. They all lack adequate water supplies, enough food, a sense of security.

I just got back from my most recent trip to Haiti at the end of June and saw how powerless they all feel. The economic conditions in Haiti -- compounded by the massive destruction to infrastructure from the quake -- have left them with little hope for today, let alone for looking ahead.

We do need to be planning for Haiti's long-term future in the recovery efforts -- for the of the country and its people -- especially its children, who have long been my major focus."

(Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images)

France is vowing to go all out on the terrorist group al-Qaeda after al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb 78-year-old French aid worker Michel Germaneau, who was taken hostage in April in Niger. These strong words -- and action to back it up -- put France front-and-center as a leader in the War on Terror: "We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said, while President Nicolas Sarkozy declared the killers will "not go unpunished."

On Thursday, France launched its first known attack against an al-Qaeda base, backing up Mauritanian forces on the Mali border and killing six suspected terrorists in a last-ditch effort to save Germaneau. More:

"The al-Qaida group said in an audio message broadcast Sunday that it had killed Germaneau in retaliation for the raid. However, French officials suggested, however, that the hostage, who had a heart problem, may already have been dead. Even now, 'We have no proof of life or death,' Morin said.

...The Salafist Group for Call and Combat formally merged with al-Qaida in 2006 and spread through the Sahel region -- parts of Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

Officials suggest France will activate accords with these countries to stop the terrorists in their tracks.

'It's a universal threat that concerns the entire world ... not just France or the West,' Defense Minister Herve Morin said Tuesday on France-2 television. 'We will support local authorities so these assassins and (their) commanders are tracked, judged and taken before justice and punished. And, yes, we will help them.'

Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger in April opened a joint military headquarters deep in the desert to respond to threats from traffickers and the al-Qaida offshoot. U.S. Special Forces have helped the four nations train troops in recent years."

Some experts suggest that this tough talk is simply similar to that President George W. Bush levied against al-Qaeda. But this is also likely Sarkozy on the offense: legislation to ban Islamic veils in France has already drawn threats from the North African al-Qaeda group, as well as French tourists on Algeria and Tunisia beaches -- "their denuded women flock to our land and occupy our beaches and streets, outrageously defying the feelings of Muslims." A statement from the group called upon Muslims to "do all in our power and take revenge at the first opportunity against France and its interests wherever they may be found."

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

More than 90,000 files related to the Afghanistan war were published on the site Wikileaks on Sunday, prompting angry reaction from the White House. The classified documents covering six years of the Afghanistan war were made available first to The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel. Under the conditions of the agreement with Wikileaks, the papers withheld their reports on the documents until Sunday.

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones lashed out Sunday evening at Wikileaks, a website boasting a database of more than 1.2 million leaked, sensitive documents. The site, founded in July 2007 with a shadowy leadership, describes itself as "a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public"; the Chinese government attempts to block the site.

"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," Jones said in a statement released by the White House. "Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted."

The documents cover coalition forces' attacks on civilians and friendly fire incidents, reveal American suspicions that Pakistan's intelligence service is aiding the insurgency, and show a strengthened Taliban that is using weapons such as heat-seeking missiles against coalition forces.

Seeing the sensitivity of the Pakistan documents, Jones also praised the partnership with Pakistan, saying that the countries had "deepened our important bilateral partnership" since 2009.

"The Pakistani military has gone on the offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, at great cost to the Pakistani military and people," Jones said. "...Yet the Pakistani government - and Pakistan's military and intelligence services - must continue their strategic shift against insurgent groups."

NYT editor Bill Keller said in a note to readers Sunday that the paper had taken care to not publish information that would harm national security. "We have, for example, withheld any names of operatives in the field and informants cited in the reports," Kellar wrote. "We have avoided anything that might compromise American or allied intelligence-gathering methods such as communications intercepts. We have not linked to the archives of raw material. At the request of the White House, The Times also urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site."

The documents reportedly cover the period from January 2004 to December 2009.

(Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)